Not surprisingly, the pandemic has torn at the already fraying fabric of many families. Cooped up away from friends and the emotional relief valve of school, even children who had been relatively easy to manage in the past have posed disciplinary challenges beyond their parents’ abilities to cope.
Dr. William G. Wilkoff
In a recent study from the Parenting in Context Lab of the University of Michigan (“Child Discipline During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Family Snapshots: Life During the Pandemic, American Academy of Pediatrics, June 8 2021) researchers found that one in six parents surveyed (n = 3,000 adults) admitted to spanking. Nearly half of the parents said that they had yelled at or threatened their children.
Five out of six parents reported using what the investigators described as less harsh “positive discipline measures.” Three-quarters of these parents used “explaining” as a strategy and nearly the same number used either time-outs or sent the children to their rooms.
Again, not surprisingly, parents who had experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE) were more than twice as likely to spank. And parents who reported an episode of intimate partner violence (IPV) were more likely to resort to a harsh discipline strategy (yelling, threatening, or spanking).
Over my professional career I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about discipline and I have attempted to summarize my thoughts in a book titled, “How to Say No to Your Toddler” (Simon and Schuster, 2003), that has been published in four languages. Based on my observations, trying to explain to a misbehaving child the error of his ways is generally parental time not well spent. A well-structured time-out, preferably in a separate room with a door closed, is the most effective and safest discipline strategy.
However, as in all of my books, this advice on discipline was colored by the families in my practice and the audience for which I was writing, primarily middle class and upper middle class, reasonably affluent parents who buy books. These are usually folks who have homes in which children often have their own rooms, or where at least there are multiple rooms with doors – spaces to escape when tensions rise. Few of these parents have endured ACEs. Few have they experienced – nor have their children witnessed – IPV.
My advice that parents make only threats that can be safely carried, out such as time-out, and to always follow up on threats and promises, is valid regardless of a family’s socioeconomic situation. However, when it comes to choosing a consequence, my standard recommendation of a time-out can be difficult to follow for a family of six living in a three-room apartment, particularly during pandemic-dictated restrictions and lockdowns.
Of course there are alternatives to time-outs in a separate space, including an extended hug in a parental lap, but these responses require that the parents have been able to compose themselves well enough, and that they have the time. One of the important benefits of time-outs is that they can provide parents the time and space to reassess the situation and consider their role in the conflict. The bottom line is that a time-out is the safest and most effective form of discipline, but it requires space and a parent relatively unburdened of financial or emotional stress. Families without these luxuries are left with few alternatives other than physical or verbal abuse.
The AAP’s Family Snapshot concludes with the observation that “pediatricians and pediatric health care providers can continue to play an important role in supporting positive discipline strategies.” That is a difficult assignment even in prepandemic times, but for those of you working with families who lack the space and time to defuse disciplinary tensions, it is a heroic task.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.